Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 is a 44-foot mural installation by Stan Douglas on permanent display at The Woodward Complex in Vancouver. This beautifully designed monograph takes an in-depth look into this monumental work that depicts a staged reenactment of a violent event in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The Gastown Riot, as it came to be known, was the culmination of mounting tensions between the city’s counterculture and police following weeks of drug-related arrests. Thousands of people had gathered in a peaceful “smoke-in” protest in the Gastown district, before police in riot gear broke up the event using batons, horses, and dogs to disperse the protesters. Douglas’s meticulous recreation captures the ensuing mayhem with its general atmosphere of confusion and panic. This monograph features essays by Nora M. Alter, Serge Guilbaut, Sven Lütticken, and Jesse Proudfoot and an interview with the artist by Alexander Alberro. Also included are supplementary works from Douglas’s Crowds & Riots series and archival photographs of the Gastown Riot.

Since the late 1980s, Stan Douglashas created films, photographs, and installations that reexamine particular locations or past events. His works often take their points of departure in local settings, from which broader issues can be identified. Making frequent use of new as well as outdated technologies, Douglas appropriates existing Hollywood genres (including murder mysteries and the Western) and borrows from classic literary works (notably, Samuel Beckett, Herman Melville, and Franz Kafka) to create ready-made contextual frameworks for his complex, thoroughly researched projects.